My father still calls to me.
Across the years, my ears
Are ever alert to his presence.
The ancestors, never let you go.
No matter how rough or random
Things become, the words
They give you from off their tongues
Help your voice, help it to rejoice
In building ideas with a broad choice.
A big broad choice of words.
Slowly learned skills
From childhood, with your ears.
Just listening.
For if you don’t know how to listen
You are, in a sense, pissing in the wind.
For the sin of a narrow vocabulary
And a broken sense of grammar
Could be seen as a lost opportunity.
A hammer to owning your own voice
And a barricade to what you want to say.
If you need to represent yourself
Wouldn’t it be better if people could listen
Beyond the boundaries, the ditches
And the closed doors
Of inverted snobbery.
In the war between the classes?
Better more bullets for the battle
Than an empty rattle bereft of clarity.
I’d rather be a Belfast word bricky.
To have that connection
Than some prick caught up in a prison
Of words and sounds
That don’t lift you up.
That only push your head down.
My father’s voice still calls to me.
Across the years, his choice
And sound within his words
Has never let me down.
Am I a snob for all that?
Merely a lower middle class twat?
That would be an easy conclusion
For youse like . . .
Yet the illusion of few words
For the many only leads to
Jimmy hitting Jenny.
Only leads to broken glass
Domestic violence, bent pennies
And a life of sitting on the fence
When it comes to wanting
A big bag of words
But just not getting it from Santa.
For it’s a toy you may be too ashamed
To play with in front of your mates.
The broken plates remain
But the gate is open.
The choice is yours.
Are you brave enough
To not be part of the herd?
aka Dangerous Banana.
A northern Irish artist
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